The song
Clint sings.
He's a little boy sitting in the dark with angry voices surrounding him, squeezing themselves under the door. Barney is asleep. He's always asleep and he doesn't like it when Clint wakes him up, so Clint tries not to. It is very late and he knows his parents would be angry if they knew he was awake, but they are too occupied with each other to notice anything else.
Clint sings a song he's learned at school, it's easy to follow and has nice words that Clint understands. He covers his ears with his hand and his voice sounds suddenly louder and a bit uneven but it's okay.
Clint sings and the other voices almost disappear.
Clint is scared. The lady told them they won't be coming back home and that he and Barney will stay in a house with other boys now. Barney is happy. He looks anxious and angry, very angry, but Clint can tell that he is happy. Clint is pretty sure he knows why, exactly, but he won't ask because Barney would be angry.
Clint gets used to not seeing mum and dad and to seeing sisters all the time. They say a prayer each evening and thank god for food. There's a sister called Miriam who prepares the breakfast for the boys every morning and when she does that, she sings a long song that has many words that Clint doesn't understand, they sound weird, but she never makes a mistake. He starts to come half an hour earlier to help her put the plates and pour juice into the cups, and he learns the melody. Miriam notices after a few days and Clint is terrified, but she assures him it's okay and tells him that he's doing really good at humming the melody. She starts to teach him the words, explaining everything Clint doesn't understand. When Barney learns about it, a few weeks later, he is angry, but Clint doesn't stop.
Clint wants to go home
He tells Barney exactly that and Barney hits him, telling him to stop crying and telling him they don't have a home anymore. Clint knows he can cry because he's a kid, he's learned that much from the sisters, but he stops immediately anyway.
'We'll find home. This place's a rat hole,' Barney states and orders Clint to pack his things after the sisters check on them in the evening.
Clint packs and Barney leads him out of the orphanage and then they walk the streets until Clint's legs hurt and a few hours more. When the sun is starting to rise they finally find a colorful gigantic tent bursting with activity despite the early hour.
'They'll want us here,' Barney says. Clint tries to believe him.
Clint never calls the circus home.
Clint meets many bad people and many amazing people, his mentor included, but his favorite person is an old gypsy woman that gives him a different name each time, saying that names are important and you shouldn't share them with anyone who comes by.
She knows Clint's name, but he doesn't mind because she's a great person.
Clint helps her set up her small tent near the big one every time there's a show and she teaches him gypsy songs. Clint is older now and knows more words, so he can say that the melodies he gets to learn are sad and full of longing. Some are in English and some are in a language Clint doesn't know, but he learns all of them. She says he has a great ear for languages and teaches him French. Clint never tells Barney. Barney is always angry these days.
She dies two years Clint and Barney arrive to the circus. Clint is already learning archery now, and he's even choses his next name: Hawkeye.
Clint will not share his real name with everyone, he knows. They will know him as Hawkeye.
Clint gets a guitar as a gift for his first real solo performance that earned him a standing ovation. Barney actually seems to approve of that, but Clint doesn't care about his brother's opinion anymore. He's a teenager now, not a baby.
When Clint isn't performing, he's picking pockets. He's really good at it and knows the virtue of moderation. It takes him three months to save enough money to buy himself a cassette deck and a few cassettes. He tried to find songs his mother used to sing to him when he was a baby but he doesn't. Instead, he records himself singing, his voice is crackly on the cheap tapes, and hides the recordings in the most secret place he can find.
The Clint discovers country music and rock and learns to follow the guitars from the songs as closely as possible. One of the acrobats overhears him practicing and makes him play for everyone. They all like country music and rock and Clint gets a standing ovation, too, much less deserved, but it makes him the same happy.
Clint knows that Barney knows. He also knows that Barney doesn't like what he's doing. They don't really speak to each other anymore.
Clint doesn't see it coming, not really, but then the Big Mess suddenly happens and he's on the run. He is underage and small for his age, so people seem to think he's an easy target. He is not. Clint might end up with split lips and black eyes, but he's the one who wins and takes the money in the end.
Clint loses his guitar pretty soon. It gets smashed. He sings one of a mourning songs the gypsy whose-name-he-still-doesn't-know taught him. He doesn't lose his bow. It's easier to run and hide without two big non-convertible objects.
Clint swears to get himself a new guitar, one day. The bow is more important now.
When he's not getting the money fooling his attackers or pickpocketing, Clint sings in bars for tips and an illegal beer.
Clint in nineteen when it happens. He's been living on his own for two years now and he hasn't seen Barney for that long, too. He gets in a tough fight and for once his opponent is clever. Clint would consider it a praise, because of the man's skill, if it didn't end the way it does.
Clint wakes up with nasty headache, blood on his hands, and buzz in his ears.
The headache goes away. He washed the blood off.
The buzz stays. It takes Clint a few days to understand that it's all he can hear now, a softest murmur of mixed noises that is slowly driving him crazy.
Clint doesn't sing anymore. He doesn't fight anymore either, so the only way he can get some money is pickpocketing.
He can't hear people shouting at him this one or two times someone notices.
In winter he gets a nasty pneumonia and ends up coughing for a few months.
Clint decides he isn't going to live like that. He finds a circus and tries to get himself a show as Hawkeye. Instead, he gets a proposition to become a vigilante. A man comes up to him and tries to talk. Clint says nothing. The man writes him everything on a slip of paper, when he understands. Clint tries desperately not to think about how humiliating that is.
The job is to kill a bad guy that's been terrorizing some people for years and no one can get to him because he's too well protected. He wouldn't expect a bow and an arrow though. Clint has heard about the man. He doesn't hesitate as soon as he sees the number written on a slip of paper.
Clint kills the man, as Hawkeye, cleans his bow as if it was a bloodstained knife, washes himself, then throws up and goes to sleep on the soft bed of a nice hotel he's staying in.
Clint takes more jobs like that and he doesn't get sick anymore. Aside from – aside from his problem. He learns sign language all by himself but never uses it. He practices lip-reading, too, and uses it all the time.
Clint is scared. The silence is always scary.
He doesn't admit it to himself, though. He's been taught better than to be a pussy.
Clint comes back from a grocery shopping to his makeshift home, a small flat he's been renting for two months, with an unpleasant headache splitting his head in two, and he finds a man sitting by his kitchen table. The man is wearing a neatly pressed suit and a dark tie.
Clint knows the flat like the back of his hand, and he knows his abilities, so he isn't scared. Whatever happens, happens. He starts to unpack his shopping calmly, ignoring the man and enjoying his slightly surprised face.
Maybe the man say something. Clint's head is filled with silence that sounds like white noise.
I know about your jobs, Hawkeye, the man writes on a page of his notebook with black cover.
'So?' Clint asks aloud, even though he hates speaking and he hardly ever does that now.
I have a better job for you.
Clint takes the job after the fourth time he comes back home – each time to another apartment – to meet the man sitting by his table as if it was the most natural thing to do.
Clint tells the man – agent Phil Coulson – that he lost his hearing a few years back. Clint doesn't talk or communicate in any other way with anyone else, not even the medical staff.
Then Clint spends his time between his room and training, ignoring other people completely. When he doesn't sleep, he sometimes reads books or just lays on his bed and thinks how much he misses the stars he could see through a small hole over his head in the tent he used to sleep in. New York is amazing and overwhelming, but there are no stars.
Clint figures he's just a little scared country boy after all.
Agent Phil Coulson comes to his room and asks if Clint is all right. Clint ignores him. The man informs Clint that he will have to go to a meeting with a psychologist if he doesn't change his behavior. The man also says that it's protocol and he wouldn't threaten with that if it was up to him.
Clint says he will run. Agent Phil Coulson says he will find Clint.
Clint, who's becomes Clint and not Hawkeye, tells Agent Phil Coulson, who's become Phil in the meantime, what it's all about the day he finishes his training. It lasts for three months and for three months Clint never attends one meeting with the psychologist and never visits the medical, despite their promise to help him.
Clint offers Phil this secret, figuring he has nothing to lose: singing calms him down. Not hearing his own voice makes his silently calmly freak out.
S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't want a deaf agent and Clint refuses getting tested and being fitted with hearing aids. Clint only stays there because of Phil's word. Clint makes Phil a mixtape out of songs he remembers liking as a gift of gratitude.
Phil listens to the tape and then says thank you.
Clint tells Phil another two months later that he used to have a guitar.
Phil buys him a guitar. Clint doesn't look at it for weeks, until he does.
Clint is still doing nothing and S.H.I.E.L.D.'s patience is wearing thin – everyone's but Phil's and Director Fury's, it seems. To make use of the time, Phil orders Clint to teach him ASL. Clint obeys. It feels as if he was paying for room and board with those lessons. That's good. Nothing is for free.
Clint smiles when Phil signs.
Clint signs, too.
Phil keeps asking him to consider hearing aids. Clint considers and says no until he says yes. He doesn't explain why he's been refusing them for so long, why he never tried to get himself a set before.
Clint was scared of finding out the can't help him.
The hearing aids help him and don't fail. It makes Clint's ears and head hurt terribly, but it allows him to distinguish Phil's voice from the background noise. Phil has a nice voice.
Clint's voice is not nice and his words are slightly slurred.
Clint doesn't always wear his aids. It hurts, even after weeks of getting used to, Phil wouldn't let him have them in all the time even if Clint wanted.
Clint is upgraded to a specialist and goes out on missions. On the first mission, he kills a man but he doesn't throw up. On the third mission he saves someone's life. On twenty-ninth he saves Phil's life. It's the first time Phil kisses him.
When they come back to the HQ, Phil asks Clint to play the guitar. Clint's head hurts badly but he can't refuse. He takes out the hearing aids and plays the guitar, letting his fingers work on muscle memory. Phil loves it.
Clint learns living between the silence and the multitude of sounds.
Clint learns handling Phil. Phil learns handling Clint.
Clint learns he doesn't need his hearing to be happy, even if it helps.
Clint learns that the air's vibrations are like a song, it's breathtaking every time his fingers touch the guitar and save his sanity, every time his fingers touch he bow and save someone's life.
Clint learns, via crackly tapes, that his voice is surprisingly on-key even when he can't hear himself. Phil likes his voice. It doesn't feel so scary anymore.
Clint has his home now and he hasn't thought of Barney in months.
The guitar's strings sing.
The bow sings.
Clint sings.
A/N: Thanks for reading!
This was written for my hurt/comfort bingo loss of hearing, card. I hope you liked it, I'll be very grateful for your comments :)